Odessa

About Odessa

Odessa is a place name used as a feminine given name, most closely associated with the Ukrainian port on the Black Sea. Its deeper meaning is uncertain. The spelling has a long American naming history as well as a modern screen namesake in actor Odessa Young, whose work includes Mothering Sunday and Shirley.

Meaning and geographical history

The city’s name looks back to ancient Greek Odessos, a name of uncertain meaning. The Ukrainian city is now commonly written Odesa in English, while the older double-s spelling remains established as a personal name.

Odessa can also be used as a feminine form of Odysseus, the Greek hero known in Latin as Ulysses. This provides another possible naming route, although it does not make the city name a translation of the hero’s name.

The modern port city was founded in 1794 and expanded rapidly through nineteenth-century maritime trade. Its free-port period lasted from 1819 to 1859. That history gives the name a coastal and commercial setting, with the movement of people and goods shaping the city’s cultural life.

Odessa Young and literary films

Odessa Young appears in Mothering Sunday, the 2021 film directed by Eva Husson and adapted from Graham Swift’s novel. Set in England after the First World War, it follows a maid whose secret relationship and experiences of loss become part of her development as a writer.

The film pairs Young with Josh O’Connor and also features Olivia Colman and Colin Firth. Its focus on memory, books, and a woman’s creative awakening gives Odessa a contemporary literary-film association, beyond the more immediate geographical one.

Young also plays Rose Nemser in Shirley, released in 2020. Directed by Josephine Decker, the film draws on Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel and imagines a young couple living with writer Shirley Jackson and her husband.

These two roles place the name within very different fictional encounters with writing: one follows the emergence of a writer, while the other enters an unsettling imagined household around an established author. Neither character is named Odessa; the association comes through the actor’s own first name.

Pronunciation and shape

In English, Odessa is pronounced oh-DESS-uh, with three syllables and the stress in the middle. The doubled s makes the crisp central sound prominent on the page, between a rounded opening and an unstressed final vowel.

Odysseus and Ulyssa are historically relevant comparisons through the alternative feminine formation. Names such as Odelia may look similar, but a resemblance in spelling alone does not make them forms of Odessa.

American popularity

Odessa’s highest annual birth count for girls in the United States SSA series was 464 in 1920, when it ranked #304. It was recorded for 56 girls in 2000 and 49 in 2010.

In 2025, the spelling was given to 193 girls and ranked #1,197. That rise from the beginning of the century gives an old place-name choice a renewed, though still uncommon, American presence.

How popular is Odessa?

In 2025, Odessa ranked #1,197 among girls in the United States, with 193 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 464 in 1920. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.